This thing with Kelly wasn't going as he expected. Their introduction was
just backwards... completely. It set Jacob's expectation on its ear. Granted, he
knew exactly what he expected, what 90% of the other gay men in
Columbus expected from a situation where you wake up naked with a stranger,
decide you like him and then meet for coffee later that day. They expect to
forgo the coffee altogether and just fuck... period. Jacob was kind of glad that
he hadn't bothered to shave his balls because that would have been time wasted.
Hell, he sweat so much already that his shower was pointless.

Goodale Park was a perfectly square microscopic city park that seemed massive
once one was inside, as if time and space warped at the edges and bent inward
making it seem huge. It had a wide manicured lawn on the south side, some nice
tree covered areas through the middle and north, a pond, a garden house, swings
and a large gazebo. Large Victorian style homes lined the north and west sides,
the highway construction braced the south and trendy apartments ran on the east
along Park Street. It was well secluded and quiet.

Jacob walked through it once on the way with Olin to the Big Bear grocery
store on Neil Avenue. Olin had commented that at one time there was a big hubbub
about guys having sex in the restrooms. He managed to impart this information to
Jacob with the same distaste as he might inform him that he had something
hanging out of his nose. Jacob got the impression that Olin was not the kind of
person who would be caught dead at some kind of glory hole. He respected that -
despite the fact that Jacob had done similar things with Ryan.

Goodale reminded him of one of the downtown parks in Fort Worth. The major
difference was that one could walk around barefoot here without fear of thistles
and fire ants. He and Ryan used to run in them until it got too cold and they
ended up at the treadmills at the gym he always preferred running outside
because the gym made him feel as if he were on display. This was amplified by
the fact that Ryan made sure that they joined the gayest, trendiest gym near the
apartment.

Now, walking alongside Kelly, he remembered just how much he enjoyed that
park. There was always something cleansing to him about running, working out or
just sweating. He had to stop himself from picking up the pace ahead of him.

"Enjoy the peace and quiet this weekend." Kelly said as they stopped at Park
and Buttles to cross the street into the park. "It will be a madhouse next
Saturday." He motioned his arm down Park street as they crossed. "They set up
this long line of Hippy-booths." He laughed. "And every moderate Republican
soccer mom will bring their kids out to expose them to the freak
show."

"Hippy booths?" Jacob asked.

"Don't tell me you've never been to some kind of free-love style community
festival before." Kelly walked backwards across the street as he spoke. "You
know those artistic, flower child festivals where they sell hemp clothing and
handmade jewelry?"

"Those may be more popular in places like Austin but I rarely saw them in
Fort Worth. I know what you mean now... it’s just been a while." Jacob laughed.
"The last festival I went to was a Rattlesnake Festival south of Glen Rose. That
was kind of like a community festival but more republican. Firearms and
funnel cakes."

"A Rattlesnake festival?" Kelly looked dubious.

"It's when people go out and collect masses of rattlesnakes for this really
weird festival."

"Collect them?"

"Yea." Jacob said. "They get thousands. It's an impressive sight."

Kelly stopped dead at the edge of the street and gaped. "Where the hell do
they get them? Does somebody breed rattlesnakes?"

Jacob shook his head. "No, they're all over the fucking place. It's Texas."

"But, they're poisonous."

"Yes, they are." Jacob moved closer to Kelly and shoved him playfully off the
street to the uneven brick sidewalk. "Snakes are cold-blooded, right?"

Kelly skipped back from Jacob as they hit the park and turned towards the
large man-made pond covered with bright green algae. To the south was the
gazebo. Kelly walked around the pond toward a bench on the other side.

"I fucking hate snakes. They make my skin crawl." Kelly looked warily behind him as if expecting Jacob
to shove him again.

"Well, anyway, you know they're cold blooded then." Jacob smiled at the sudden change in Kelly's reactions to the snakes. He thought it might be fun to prod him a bit. "In the spring it's still pretty cold
outside and they don't have a lot of kick to them then. They're not very
active and pretty docile. So they put them in this huge area that's just full of them- this living mass."

"Ugh." Kelly shook his head. "Why in the hell would they do something like that?" Jacob loved this reaction. "Kinda seems like one of
those bizarre fundamentalist ritual things."

"No, it's kind of like hunting season. It's how they prune back the
population."

"What, there's this big rattlesnake problem in Texas?"

"Yes," Jacob answered unequivocally. "There is."

Kelly stopped at the shaded bench by a concave rock wall. He sat down and
splayed his legs as if exhausted; his head dropped back as he exhaled. "Goddamn
it's fucking hot."

Jacob agreed as he sat next to him. He was soaked in sweat and uncomfortable. "Yea, this is pretty nasty. It's too
humid."

Kelly pulled his sweaty shirt away from his chest and flapped the shirt tail.
"Shit."

Jacob leaned his forearms on his knees. He stared into the pond, overwhelmed
by the musty, cloying smell. The edge of the water was a wide ring of lily pads
and fluorescent green algae making it seem almost like a sewage treatment pond.
He watched in mild disgust as a couple, further down, threw a tennis ball into
the water and encouraged a wet black lab to swim into the murky water to
retrieve it. Whenever the dog emerged it shook water all over them and anyone
passing.

That dog must smell terrible.

"What did they do once they caught them?" Kelly asked as he stared up at the
spindly tree branches above them.

"What?" Jacob turned his head, his mind still on the dog and tennis ball.
"Caught what?"

"Oh..." Jacob chuckled. "Heh." He thought for a moment. "It's been a few
years, about two years before I met Ryan, since I went." He stared down at his
feet and watched the sweat drop off the end of his nose. "They had a lot of them
in one place, but mostly they made shit out of them, you know... snakeskin
wallets, belts, that kind of shit. Some people cooked them."

"What?" Kelly's lip curled. "Yuck."

"It's not that bad. I had this rattlesnake burrito and it was actually pretty
good. It was spicy and the meat was a little stringy but I liked it."

Kelly made a sound similar to breathy whistle and made an exaggerated
shiver. "No thank you." He said. "I think I would pass on that. Can we kill this snake conversation? I'm almost sorry I asked." Kelly made another sound of disgust. "Ugh... stringy."

Jacob started thinking more about that festival and smiled to himself. "Well, I
ended up buying a butterfly knife there." He thoughtfully rubbed his lip. "I'd
never had a knife and I saw this really cool one with this smooth black handle.
I ended up getting it for about five bucks from this old man who was selling
them alongside these rebel flag Zippo lighters."

"I had that thing for a while; carried it with me all the time." He stared
out across the pond at people walking along the other side. "Ryan stole it from
me as soon as he saw it. I don't know if he still carries it but he went apeshit
over it."

"I only had one knife." Kelly said. "My uncle gave it to me when I was
thirteen. I hated it but I carried it for few years and then gave it to
someone."

"You hated it?" Jacob was confused. "How can you hate a knife?"

"Well, maybe it was the comparison to what I wanted. My dad used to carry a pocketknife with a really nice mahogany and cherry
wood casing. It just looked like something you'd want to carry, you know?"

"I've seen some like that."

"Yea." Kelly moved his hands as if he had the knife in his fingers. "Mine had this pale white casing and both
sides had the same worn black stencil that said "Elvis lives" and had a
silhouette of him."

"So why carry it if you hated it? You wanted one like your dad's?"

"Kind of. I mean, the longer I looked at that knife the more I wanted one
like my dad's. Funny thing was that I didn't even want a knife... at
all." He said. "A pocket knife isn't something that your average, everyday gay
kid wants. But I carried it because all of my cousins had knives, and some of my
friends in school had them. I was trying to fit in."

"With a knife?"

"You know how it is..." Kelly seemed to admonish Jacob a little for his
confusion. "You grab hold of anything you possibly can to appear like a normal
kid. A knife was something that was tiny, subtle. You remember subtlety, don't
you?"

"But it made you who you are..." Kelly began but seemed to trail off as the
couple with the dog made more noise and came closer.

The dog went thrashing into the water again after the tennis ball. The young
woman called out "Gretchen", glanced over at Jacob and smiled in that "hello
stranger, aren’t we all having a lovely day" way. She clapped her hands and
leaned forward as the dog swam quietly back toward the side of the pond.

Jacob wasn't sure how to answer Kelly's question. "I guess."

They were silent for a few moments before Kelly continued. "I hated Elvis."
He chuckled and leaned forward to match Jacob's pose. "And that's what did it to
me. My dislike for Elvis overcame my desire to be like everyone else." He
sighed. "In fact, I gave it away shortly before I came out." He aired his shirt
again, pulling it away from his skin. "Interesting, I hadn't thought of that for
a long time but 'd bet I would have carried one a lot longer if I'd had one like
my dad's."

"I dunno, I guess about how he felt about me." Jacob shook his head. "While
we were together he walked this thin line between hating us and loving us. Most
of the time, when we were together, we had this fantastic relationship. We talked,
we had fun together, we argued about shit... it was nice." Jacob turned and
looked at Kelly. "But then he would just vanish for a weekend and I never knew
what was going on. Eventually I found out that he was going to see his parents
and didn't want me to come along."

"Never. I think that he even had a story cooked up about why I lived in his
apartment." Jacob wasn't sure how to describe Ryan at all. He kept thinking that
somehow he should try to redeem him, try to describe him as a better person to
Kelly. "But when we were together it was great."

"Well, yea, until the last time"

"No, it was OK then." Jacob remembered the night before Ryan left his little
note and the things they discussed. They were planning a future. Jacob refused
to believe that what happened was the result of some long pent-up anger or
boredom or anything that had to do with him. That was why he was able to see
past the words that Ryan used and try to understand that something else had
happened. "It happened while I wasn't there. I don't think it had anything to do
with me. At least not in the way he represented it."

"So that's why you don't hate him."

Jacob didn't reply. He accepted the fact that Ryan didn't want him around and
that was the extent of it. He had made the clean break. He could have stayed in
Texas, with Frankie or someone else but he bugged out. He just called Olin,
bought his ticket and fled. He called work from Olin's house to let them know he
wouldn't be back. He changed everything.

"Liar." Kelly wiped the sweat off his face with the tail of his shirt. "I
can't gauge anything of how you feel on this. You seem to be introspective about
it but. I don't know. I can't put my finger on it."

Jacob shrugged his shoulders and smirked. "Maybe it's just difficult to be
angry with someone who looks that good."

"So it was just sex, then?"

"No... Maybe... maybe not."

"Well, what did he look like?" Kelly asked. "Do you have any pictures of
him?"

Jacob laughed. "Yea, but I only have one."

"One?" Kelly looked confused. "Weren't you together for over a year?"

"Ryan never let anyone take photos of him and me together. He barely let
anyone take his picture at all so - "

Jacob paused. That thought had occurred to him before but he never gave it
much credence.

"It sounds as if he held all the cards all the time." Kelly said. "Did you
ever have any input at all in that relationship?"

Jacob started to get angry with the vein of Kelly's questions. "Look, I'm not
someone's doormat." He felt he needed to lay it all out before Kelly jumped to
any more conclusions or thought he was crazy. "I'm angry with him, yes. But I
can't hate him. I loved him and there isn't a thin line between those for me."
Jacob spoke passionately about his feelings and when he turned to face Kelly he
used his hands as he spoke. "I can't tell you if I want to hurt him or hold him.
I don't know if I want to fuck him or fuck him over. I don't really know what to
feel." That statement was the closest thing to the exact feeling Jacob had about
the situation and it rang true as he spoke them.

Kelly sat forward and smiled. He took his hand and placed it behind Jacob's
head and pulled him to his mouth - as he had that morning - and kissed
him. This kiss was quicker and less passionate but Jacob felt his frustration
calm a little.

"You called me, didn't you?" There was a playful quality in Kelly's tone that
told Jacob that his reservations about calling might have been well founded. It said
that if Kelly had liked Jacob less he might not have run to the phone when he
heard the answering machine.

"Sometimes I feel as if I'm living somebody else's life, not mine." Jacob
stared down at his and Kelly's hand. He moved his thumb across Kelly's pale
callused palm and remembered kissing it the night before. He wasn't sure why
this memory came to him when so many others that he wanted did not. He
looked back up at Kelly and examined him carefully. "It's like I look at what
happened and it's like it happened to someone else, it's someone else's problem.
Someone far away. I don't know if that's crazy or not." Jacob wrinkled his brow
at that. "I don't want to be crazy. But I'm totally in the dark. I mean, he left
me this horrible letter and completely forced me out and the thing is... it
feels fake. It's funny you should say that because he's a real person but he
became a memory so fast that it confuses me." He looked intently at Kelly. "So, how can you
tell which is which?"

"Memory or a real person?" Kelly seemed to contemplate this for a lot longer
than Jacob wanted. He was quiet for a while and the reflective sunglasses gave
Jacob nothing more than his own reflection. He finally shrugged and said "I
can't tell. I don’t know. I guess it's just my way of telling you that I don't
know what I'm getting into with you." He smiled. "But I think it might be worth
it in the end and I just don't want to get into something with someone who will just take off."

Kelly didn't seem to be saying this for effect and Jacob was unnerved by such
a blunt response and confession. Ryan only revealed things he felt deeply after
a long period of argument or drinking. Jacob wasn't sure how to even hear this.

"I'm not sure what I'm competing with..." Kelly began. "Or if I'm ready to
compete at all. I mean we just met but you're really easy to like. And the things I know about this Ryan-guy is that he was
good looking and manipulative..." He paused distinctly as if something just occured to him. "... everyone else hated him, didn't they?"

Jacob sighed. "Pretty much."

"That happens a lot." Kelly said. "People feel two ways towards manipulative
people. They either detest them or love them. There's not a lot of middle
ground."

"I guess... I know all of my friends wanted to sleep with him as well." Jacob
again looked at their fingers. "No one told me but I knew. And I think that he
slept with a few of them. It's weird. Yea, they hated him but he was fucking
gorgeous and he would use that. If he couldn't make them love him he would
make them want him." Jacob sighed. "I always knew when something happened
because they got this split personality around him. It was like somehow he used
their friendship with me and held it over their heads. Everything would change
and I knew that he'd done something. But ...I'm not really sure I know how to
describe him or the situation. He's one of the few guys I've ever been with
who's been able to make me do something that I didn't want to do and enjoy it."

Kelly nodded. "It happens."

"Not to me, it doesn't." Jacob said sharply. "I spent a lot of time learning
how to have self-respect and vision and self-reliance." He closed his eyes. "And
I know that he managed to get me to do things that I would have never done on my
own." Jacob laughed as he realized something. "You know what? Right now I can't
even remember what he looks like - how fucked up is that? This great love
and I can't even picture his face."

"What do you mean?" Kelly leaned in, his sunglasses slid down on his nose as
he stared at Jacob. "What kind of picture was it?"

Jacob shook his head. "It was this dirty picture... I mean, really bad. But for me
it had all of these feelings wrapped in it. That picture was taken at the
beginning of the end of us... the fucked up thing about it is that I was so
fucking happy in it. It would be easier to describe him."